


Come As You Are

by litsasecret



Series: Girl!Frank [2]
Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-26
Updated: 2011-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litsasecret/pseuds/litsasecret
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard tricks Frank into buying a dress for a charity event. Girl!Frank.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come As You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silentdescant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentdescant/gifts).



> Twitter prompt!fic, so take from that what you will.

"Frank, I bet you look adorable, just come show us."

“No!” Frank snapped, and the bare feet Gerard was watching intently under the dressing room door shuffled around a little more, the barest hint of a dark hemline brushing the knobs of her ankles. Gerard was an indulgent, imaginative sort of guy, so he went ahead and pictured the sort of delicate, strappy shoe people wore with nice dresses wrapped around those bare feet.

“C’mon,” Mikey said, quiet but just as eager.

The door swung open. “See?” Gerard asked, then he sucked in a breath and let the rest of what he’d been going to say die before it hit his tongue. He’d forgotten what it was going to be already anyway, so it couldn’t have been _that_ important.

The problem was that Frank always wanted to be one of the guys; she tended to steal clothing from the four of them just as much as they stole from each other, so her wardrobe was hardly feminine. It wasn’t like Gerard cared, anyway. Societal ideas of the gender binary were pointless and old fashioned and he refused to look at someone differently just because her reproductive organs were mysterious entities that resided inside her body, of all places, and—

Right. The dress. Gerard had picked it out, because Brian was terrified of suggesting to Frank that she ought to, maybe, wear a dress to this formal event thing they had to go to. (Gerard was pretty sure it was for a charity. Like, 98% sure. He’d asked Mikey if it was, and Mikey had shrugged, so, that was as good as being sure.)

Gerard had picked it out, and pretended like he was joking, and now she was, like, actually wearing it, which; seriously? So maybe gender binaries were outmoded, but sometimes, sometimes he forgot that Frank was a _girl_ under all of that.

Her tattoos were stark and obvious, crawling along her pale skin, exposed by the dress, making her look vulnerable and feminine, and Gerard couldn’t really quantify what that made him feel, but it was deep and feral and probably something that justified that whole socio-cultural construct.

He made a squeaky sort of noise, and Frank turned scarlet. “See? I told you. I said it was a stupid idea. God, why do you always—“ She turned, probably to go back into the dressing room and maybe burn the dress into a tidy pile of ashes with her cigarette lighter (which Gerard had totally swiped before she went into the cubicle the first time. He wasn’t _that_ stupid.) and maybe glare at him through the door.

“Hey!” Gerard said, and he slammed a hand into the door to stop it from closing. “Hey, no, no, that isn’t what I meant. I mean, it’s nice, right? Like, like it’s girly which is weird, but it’s not _bad_ weird, it’s like, the _best_ kind of weird I’ve seen in a while, and there were those Zombie MCR cupcakes that fan brought, which were epic levels of awesome weird, so, you know, it’s not a _bad_ thing at all.”

“I like it,” Mikey said, which, go Mikey, getting the point across without being distracted by cupcakes. Gerard could always count on him for that.

“Really?” Frank said, and she ran her hands nervously over the satin of the skirt. “Because I feel like I did for prom, and that’s not a good feeling, you know?”

“Really,” Gerard said fervently.

“I mean, I still don’t have boobs. And like… this dress isn’t making it look like I do. Aren’t dresses supposed to do that?”

“I think that’s bras,” Gerard said. He had gone that one week dressing like a girl. The only way to get believable breasts was a half-decent bra with like, extra gel padding. He wasn’t sure why that worked, but, well, Frank looked kind of forlorn, and was sort of groping her chest, and he didn’t care if she had a decent chest or not, so he grabbed her hand, and Mikey took the other one, and they dragged her to the front of the dressing rooms where there was a five-way mirror thing.

The saleslady made appropriate noises about the cut and fit, and then she tugged on Frank’s hair, tsking a little. “You’ll want to have it styled, for this, I think. And probably cut professionally too. Does your sister cut this?”

Gerard blushed. “I do,” he said, and Mikey ran hands through his own hair, equally self-conscious.

“I’m in a band,” Frank explained, valiantly resisting doing the same, Gerard could tell. “We don’t have time for salon visits.”

She didn’t mention how she’d never set foot in a beauty salon in the entirety of her adult life, which was actually a pretty full-blown rant. It was, in fact, the exact rant she’d used to convince Gerard to cut her hair too, one day when he’d been carefully clipping at Mikey’s.

“You’ll want the hem altered, you’re so petite,” The saleslady said, deciding to leave the hair issue for now. Gerard rubbed at his cheek and absolutely did not give her a grateful look.

“I like it though,” Gerard said. “Is it supposed to be higher? It’s a formal event.”

Frank turned on him, the skirt flaring out around her at the abruptness of the movement. Gerard kind of thought that maybe if she wasn’t wearing a dress that cost more than her first car, she would have tackled him. “You said I could wear a tux! You _said_ you’d talk to Brian and he’d agree with you that I don’t have to wear a fucking dress to his fucking charity event!”

“Uh,” Gerard said. “No. I mean, I said I’d _try_ , but Brian thinks that you should try to, like, show that our music isn’t about hating women. Because that last article in AP was kind of…”

“Traitor,” she mumbled, but she went back to staring at herself from all sides in the mirror.

Gerard reached to trace over the tattoo he’d drawn for her, his lines on her skin, and he said,” It’s up to you. None of us is gonna care if you wear Mikey’s jeans and Brian’s favorite hoodie, right? It’s just clothes, it’s not who you are. And everyone who counts knows that you’re awesome, and a dress doesn’t change that, not in either direction.”

“But you look nice,” Mikey said, and he sounded just this side of petulant, so Gerard smiled a little and agreed with him.

“But you look nice.”

“Should I get a new bra then?” Frank asked, looking at the saleslady but Gerard thought maybe it was a different kind of test, one for him and Mikey.

“Only if you want to,” Gerard said, even as the saleslady nodded and tried to usher Frank over to the lingerie selection.

“It would improve your silhouette in that dress, of course, but you’ll want to be certain that it’s not visible, especially given the way the back is cut. In fact, if the event is terribly formal, you might consider something that is slightly more—ah, conservative – so as to avoid offending those people who might not understand your body art.”

Mikey shook his head, and Frank glared at the saleslady. “This dress. And no alterations. Or bras.”

Frank turned on her heel to go change out of the dress.

The saleslady handed Gerard a card. “My hairdresser’s number. And you might try to wheedle her into something other than motorcycle boots with that dress.”

Gerard hoped Frank hadn’t heard that, because if she had, there would be no way to convince her that she wouldn’t, in fact, _die_ if Mikey wouldn’t loan her his boots.

And he still liked the image of her feet in strappy, delicate shoes.


End file.
